


A Princess In Hiding

by jalendavi_lady



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Book 7: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-08
Updated: 2010-06-08
Packaged: 2017-10-13 06:20:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/133949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jalendavi_lady/pseuds/jalendavi_lady
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Barely a month after the beginning of <i>Deathly Hallows</i>, Fred and George Weasley make a business visit to a special employee.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Princess In Hiding

Fred and George set their brooms in the corner of the small room. Special rooms like this were quite common in Muggle-dominated areas, where too many brooms downstairs would be suspicious. Given that the owner of the home had more Muggle visitors than witches or wizards, her personal secrecy was to the extreme of everyday Wizarding practice.

Given that she was the most reliable person for potions piecework they had ever met, her safety was paramount to them as well as to her. They wouldn't have gotten several of their antidotes working nearly so well without her, and her input had been integral to more than a few potions in their defensive assortment.

"Ms. P, we're here!" Fred called out.

"Come in, boys. I've got that batch of burn potion done, and if you're willing to stay for dinner the love potion antidote should be done by the time the full moon rises."

George opened the door.

A dowdy elderly witch was sitting on a stool, directing the stirring rods in seven large cauldrons with her wand. She had a tendency to look perpetually cross, but there really wasn't much else one could expect from an old widow doing piecework to survive.

Her wedding band sat on her finger alone and George had come to suspect from the lines on her face and calluses on her hands that it had always sat alone there.

She looked over at them as she reversed the stirring on a cauldron that looked like half-made diluted Amortentia, then hopped off the stool. "George! What happened to your ear?"

They let her use first names out of necessity and out of no small affection for the old lady. She had never gotten them mixed up, a thing which surprised both of them greatly.

"I was flying away from Death Eaters, and someone got in a lucky shot."

Fred added, gently, "It's a cursed wound. Dark magic. Mother tried to fix it, but it's going to be like that from now on."

"How long ago did it happen?"

"A few weeks. About the time of the attack on Privet Drive," George told her.

She looked straight into his eyes, then announced after a moment, "You mean _in_ the attack on Privet Drive."

They both looked away.

"I get the _Prophet_ , boys. Indirectly, but I do get it, and you aren't the only customers I've got who are willing to pass old issues along. How many people on broomsticks were leaving that house? With how many decoys?"

"Well, we were on the Quidditch team," Fred said.

"And I suppose too many bloody Bludgers to the head is going to be your explanation for everything from now on?" She paused in mid-rant, then seemed to get even more upset. "Oh, don't tell me that was what you needed that batch of Polyjuice Potion made quietly for!"

"The Order doesn't have a potions expert anymore," George explained. "Not that it looks like they ever had one to begin with, now. And Slughorn doesn't want his neck on the line."

"And so you trick little old ladies to do the work of the Order."

"It was just a cauldron of potion, Ms. P. Bought and paid for." Fred held his hands out and opened, palms-up, in front of him.

"I am an artist! Standard formulas may not be traceable to the maker, but if they got a sample off of a vial they might be able to identify the variant! You _know_ You-Know-Who has a potions master on his side."

George felt his eyes go wide and Fred gasped. "I... We took everything with us. Nothing was left in Privet Drive," George tried to explain.

"I don't fancy having my life put on the line without my permission. As happened just before I moved here, I'll have you know. I had hoped it would never happen again. It was bad enough to have to move out of the home I had made a life in with my husband! But the home of my old age, as well?"

"Ms. P, we don't even know who you really are," Fred whispered. "And we've been the ones giving you the most trade."

"Running seven cauldrons at once is a bit more noticeable than a few drops of potion," George reasoned.

"But that potion could anger him in a way my cauldrons on their own never could." Her voice was strangely level. "And as you've said, he has a potions master on his side now. Always has had, most likely."

There was something in her voice, an odd sadness that went beyond normal fear. "Ms. P?"

"Oh, I've been invisible all of my life," she smirked weakly. "I suppose I'll be fine for the last years of it, too."

"But if You-Know-Who..." Fred began, worry in his own eyes now.

"I've been invisible to him, especially. He likely thinks I'm long dead, anyway. I've been using my maiden initial, you see, and when I'm dealing with Muggles I use a first name lifted from one of their novels. If anyone wanted to look hard enough, and had known me well enough before I ran, they could find me. But I've always been invisible to that upstart."

She smirked.

"Even when we shared a House at Hogwarts for three years, I was invisible to him. And no, I'm not telling you who is older."

"You were a Slytherin?" George blurted.

"My family tended to it, yes. Cunning, capability to hide in plain sight and hide better than that in shadows, and a general sense of self-preservation." She put her left hand on her hip, shaking a stirring rod at them in her right. "Now, were you staying for dinner or not? I have a shepherd's pie in the oven downstairs, keeping warm, and if we stand talking too long it will have gone cold."

* * *

They sat around her table downstairs, sharing a pile of warm scones.

Fred shook his head. "I never would have thought you would have been a Slytherin."

She sat up straighter, smirking slightly. "That hat sees things people don't, Fred Weasley. The founders knew what they were doing. I doubt seriously that any Gryffindor could keep hidden as long as I have."

Both twins opened their mouths in protest.

"And at the same time, there is a place for the forward charges and the moments of blind heroism your House seems to specialize in. And the stubborn determination of the Hufflepuffs. And the airy knowledge of the Ravenclaws. But my skills serve me well enough." She grabbed a scone and began eating it.

"But... you..." George stammered.

"You're too nice!" Fred blurted.

She ate the last bite of her scone before replying. "You have never lived in a world untouched by his darkness. You have never lived in a world where he or his followers or his followers' children were not in Slytherin House, recruiting the brightest of the cunning to serve. He took a fair handful from the other Houses, to be sure. But Slytherin House has been his recruiting ground.

"There are very few of my House left that are free from that influence, boys. I and Andromeda Black are rather more in character what was originally intended, if one ignores our tastes in men."

"You married a Muggle-born, like she did?" Fred asked, leaning forward to grab another scone for himself.

"My husband might have even made her whisper the words 'blood traitor'. And if I recall correctly, when she was very small she did." She pulled her shawl closer around her shoulders. "You two had better be leaving soon. I'll go up and get that antidote safely in beakers and into one of those charmed transport bags of yours." She got up and went up the stairs, which were enchanted to be hidden from Muggle eyes.

"She's a Slytherin?" Fred whispered.

"Best reason to hide I've ever heard," George whispered back. "If she's right about You-Know-Who's recruitment patterns, and she shared time at Hogwarts with him..."

Fred shivered. "She could have defied him before he took his name, and no one else but them might even remember it."

"And eating by piecework, after all this?"

They each met the other's eyes, both grim for once in their lives.

There were going to be things to discuss if they all three survived this war.

"Your mother will be worrying herself gray!" came a reminding call from upstairs. "I've heard about her clock. Don't think that just because you've mostly moved out that she won't fret if she knows you're not safely home at a reasonable hour!"

They looked at each other, grinned, and headed upstairs.


End file.
